18 minutes, 23 seconds
by ohthelinsanity
Summary: in which Naruto asks Sakura about that time she literally reached into his chest and grabbed his heart with her bare hand.


They're sitting on her worn green sofa in her new apartment when he thinks of it. Sakura's halfway through a medical scroll that probably unravels to Suna, trying to create a new medical jutsu just for the sole purpose of eliminating her mango allergy—the peace of a new era has sure made some of them bored out of their skulls, Sakura surprisingly so. She's chewing on her left thumb that's worn of nude polish, mumbling what sounds like smoothie recipes under her breath when Naruto says his thoughts aloud: "How'd you do it?"

Sakura takes her thumb out of her mouth and goes to chewing on her lip instead, but her eyes don't leave the leathery scroll. "Do what," she says flatly.

Naruto blinks once, twice, the realization becoming more and more disturbing as he dwells on it. "You stuck your whole _hand_ inside my abdominal cavity and manually _pumped my heart."_

He knows he's caught her off guard when the scroll goes limp in her hand—after all, that happened about a year ago. She glances off to the side at nothing in particular before she stares him down and tells him like it's the most obvious thing in the world: "Medical ninjutsu."

Okay, _yeah,_ he gets that part. But Sakura is way oversimplifying what he's now dubbing an act of _God_. "How'd you get past my ribs?" Naruto lifts his shirt and starts poking and counting at his side, suddenly skeptical that they're all still there.

"I broke them," she shrugs and Naruto pats his chest with a little more purpose. "I _fixed_ them. Relax. You're fine. They're all there."

"What about my lung?"

"I pushed it aside."

"Ewwwww."

"Lungs aren't the grossest thing I've touched. Trust me."

Naruto gets horrific, horrific flashbacks to Sakura's story about having to give Kakashi-sensei a prostate exam and promptly pushes them so far back inside his mind, not even Ibiki could find it. But speaking of gross, "…Were your hands even clean?"

She snorts. "Nope," and her lips pop with the syllable. Naruto whines again and this time Sakura grins, licking the palm of her hand and slapping it into his whiskered cheek. "They were filthy."

He swats her hand away as she laughs, sinking further into the couch before she goes back to studying her big-ass scroll. The glazed look she always gets when she's concentrated comes back, but the twinge of a smile still remains as he foot shakes slightly from its resting place on the coffee table. But he's not done yet. "Sakura-chan?"

"Yeah."

"Was it hard?"

Sakura sets the scroll in her lap and side-eyes him like she does her 8 year old patients who are trying to get out of a tetanus shot. "Well, it wasn't _easy."_

Maybe it's a stupid question, but Naruto doesn't really know how else to word it. He tries another one. "How long did you do it for?"

"18 minutes, 23 seconds."

She says it with the confidence she says with her own name and Naruto's jaw goes slack. Eighteen minutes is _way_ longer than he thought it would be. He didn't even know a person could give CPR for that long.

"Longest 18 minutes and 23 seconds of my life," she says quietly, playing with the tassel on the edge of her scroll. "I'm just glad we found your father when we did. I was almost burned out."

Naruto's still stuck on the whole 18 _fucking_ minutes thing. "You….you pumped my heart for almost twenty minutes?"

"Pumped your heart, gave you air…."

"You kissed me for _20 minutes!?"_

She frowns. "18 minutes," she says sternly. "And it wasn't a kiss."

As much as he wants to argue and tease her about it, the sad look on her face makes him think twice about that. Instead his eyes drift to the hands that are unraveling the red tassel, the hands that have healed and saved lives. On the most basic level, Sakura's hands are ugly—a fact that she doesn't even dispute when it's pointed out. They're large for someone her size (to match the forehead, he supposes) and terribly calloused on the heels. She's got weird tan lines from different gloves she's worn and one of her fingers is shorter than the rest from an early training accident with Tsunade when she was younger. Knobby knuckles, scratches, and stub nails: Sakura's hands are worn.

Worn, but terribly, incredibly, magnificently strong.

He looks at his own hands—they're tanner and a little bit pudgier, but they look dainty and delicate compared to hers. "Ne," he muses aloud, and Sakura looks up from her mindless scroll fiddling and waits for him to finish. "Are hearts _slimy?"_

She smiles at that, huffing out a laugh through her nose. "Yeah, your heart was kind of slimy."

"….Katsuya slimy or Gamakichi slimy?"

She sputters out one of her ugly laughs with the snorts. "You have a slime spectrum?"

It sounds ridiculous when she points it out, but he can't ignore the fact that there is a difference. "Sakura-chan, this is a scientific _inquiry_ details are _pertinent."_

"Oooohhhh," she coos, taking one of her feet and poking his side teasingly; he grabs it and holds it hostage in his lap. "Inquiry? Pertinent? Those are some big words."

He rubs her foot while he waits for an answer.

"Katsuya," she eventually says, and Naruto howls with disappointment. Katsuya is _super_ slimy. "Oh, it's not that bad. What _was_ bad," she continues, holding up her hand (the one with the short finger) in front of his face, "Was you've got one _big heart,_ mister."

Naruto blinks, confused.

Sakura flexes her fingers, curling them around the air. "I could barely get my grip—and I don't exactly have Ino's hands," she gripes, examining them like she just painted them. "All that running, screaming, training…all that hard work you've put into everything you've ever done? It's made your heart big. It's made it s _trong._ "

She smiles at him, a smile that makes him wonder if his heart can swell any bigger.

"Which is a good thing, too," she coughs after a few minutes, a blush spread across her face for whatever reason. "Because if it wasn't strong, I don't think it would have lasted being manhandled by my big meaty claws."

Naruto grins, reaching forward to grab one of her hands. He presses his palm to hers, lines their fingers up, and compares their size—her hands are only a wee bit smaller than his. "Amazing…." He mumbles, staring at their hands.

She cocks her head to the side, not completely unlike Pakkun might. "What?"

"You," he blurts out, and the pink on her cheeks remains. "Your _big meaty claws_ saved my life."

Sakura is surprisingly humorous as she shakes her head with a small smile. She laces their fingers together and gives his hand a squeeze. "I'd do it again and again."

"Even though it's _slimy?"_ he teases, but his words are soft.

She brings their hands to her face and kisses his knuckles. "Whatever it takes. I got your back, Naruto. Remember that."

"Well technically, it's my _heart,"_ he says, not realizing how that sounds until it's too late. His cheeks heat up with embarrassment and Sakura giggles at his expense.

"That too," she smiles brightly. "But it's only fair."

He pouts. "How?"

"You've got mine."

He's too busy kissing her to tell her how cheesy that is.


End file.
